Experiments in Teaching Research Skills

For the first time in the upcoming semester, I will be assigning a group research project in a course. The course is an upper-level course that satisfies a general education requirement, and while I do have a number of majors in the course (hallelujah!) I also will have a range of students of varying ability levels and disciplines. Since the course is numbered at the junior level, I'm committed to including a research component, but from the beginning I decided that I wanted to experiment with a different kind of research assignment from the traditional research paper, particularly since this is not a course aimed solely at majors.

So, how to organize a research assignment from which all students will learn something and at which all students have the potential to succeed when the range of students in the course is so wide? Well, that was the task I set for myself, and what I came up with is this group project idea.

I know. Students hate group projects. But I think the beauty of what I've designed is that the bulk of the work is actually individual, and even the group portions won't require a great deal of meeting with one another - they could probably manage the project entirely electronically if they so chose to do so. The first portion, a group portion, requires each group member to read a brief theoretical text that I assign. (This is also a way to get them to grapple with theory, albeit in a small way.) As a group, they need to write a 250 word summary and a 250 word analysis that connects the theory to the unit to which their project corresponds. (I've offered to meet with the groups to discuss the theory stuff outside of class should they feel at sea with this portion of the assignment.) Then, each individual member is responsible for finding 3 secondary sources and providing an annotation for each, and then for finding 3 primary sources (literary texts of some stripe) that are not on the syllabus that could supplement the assigned texts for the unit with an explanation for how they fit into the unit's themes. Each individual member then needs to write an analysis of how the group worked together, what they learned from their individual part in the project, and what they learn from looking at the project as a whole. Finally, the last "group" part of the grade has to do with formatting and submission, so I'm going to receive just one document with all of the above included. Once I've graded each project (there will be four total), I will post them on the course blackboard site so that all students in the course can see what other groups have done, thus providing 4 supplementary packets of material for students who'd be interested in further reading on the topic of the course.

I suppose the reason I'm excited about this assignment is that 1) it forces them into the library and to read and think about sources (both secondary and primary) in a critical way; 2) it's not actually that much work for each individual, and the project assignment clearly assigns duties to individuals so that one person won't get stuck doing all of the work 3) it gives students the opportunity to hone research skills separately from the monumental task of writing a paper, which I really don't think we give students enough opportunity to do. (I will have them write an essay in which they will need to integrate two secondary critical sources, so they will do some research writing, but they will not do a full-blown research paper in the course, as I expect students to do in senior-level courses.)

Of course, the whole thing could go horribly awry, but my hope is that I've thought of the pitfalls and that students will ultimately find the experience of the project rewarding and that they'll learn something from it. So that's what I've spent my morning doing - trying to compose an assignment for the project that is incredibly clear and that closes all possible loopholes that will make the whole thing disastrous. Have any of you ever assigned a similar sort of project? If so, do you have any advice from your experiences? Also, from my above description, do you see any potential difficulties that I'm not anticipating?

In Which Grading Makes Me Interesting: A Post on Close Reading

Jane Gallop gave a paper on what was, arguably, the It Panel at this year's MLA. The panel was called "Academic Fashions," and another paper on the panel was (it turned out, erroneously) titled, "Is the Rectum a Text?" and so obviously, the panel was going to garner some attention. Perhaps what was most interesting about Gallop's talk was that it emphasized the necessity of the dreadfully unfashionable "close reading." Now, I went to the panel, and I remember thinking, as I listened to Gallop's paper, a combination of "right on, sister!" and "uhh... maybe in some places people don't emphasize teaching students how to do close reading, but I don't live in one of those places...." Because Gallop's argument was that we needed to resurrect the skill of close reading, to bring it back from the oblivion to which it was exiled during the Rule of New Historicism. Now, again, I'm totally in favor of teaching close reading. I insist that my students learn how to do it. I suppose I couldn't quite get my mind around the notion of bringing something back that I never abandoned. And did anybody really abandon it outside the hallowed halls of elite research institutions?

That said, though, maybe "close reading" isn't a skill that one can depend on students to have, even at an institution like mine where the curriculum remains locked in place at around 1973. Maybe it needs to make a comeback, even at places such as my current place. Or at least this is my feeling after reading the first batch of papers from the students in my upper-level course this semester.

That's right, I'm talking about the juniors and seniors, the English majors. I accept that first and second-year students, or students who are further along in their degrees but who are non-majors, may not have gotten the memo about the necessity of performing close readings of passages of the texts that they read, about grounding one's claims in actual, I don't know, literature. But how on God's green earth is it possible that my bright, engaged, English majors who are on their way to graduation have not gotten the memo? For many of them have not.

This is not a case of what Gallop lamented in her paper. This is not a case of students supplanting dime-store historicism and theoretical mumbo-jumbo with careful textual analysis. Rather, it's the opposite of that: my students, when they fail to do close reading, lapse instead into talking about how "they feel" a novel works and how "they feel" about some "aspect" of the text. "Aspects" are very important to this kind of analysis. So, too, is the passive voice, as is the invention of words that do not exist in the English language to make things sound better or more academic. But at the end of the day, what I read from a lot of my students (though not all) was pretty undeveloped first-draft initial reaction type stuff. I wasn't reading careful, close, deep analysis of a passage of text. And so yes, I'm bringing close reading back. (You can sing that to the tune of Justin Timberlake's "I'm Bringing Sexy Back" if you want.... sure, the rhythm's a bit off, but it's pretty fun, I think.)

But then reading their papers got me thinking about why I'm so invested in this project of forcing them to do careful close reading of passages of text - in all of my classes and not just the upper-level ones. Why do I think that this is important? Is it important? And if it is, I should really have a reason for why it is, right?

If I'm going to be honest, I think that probably the primary reason that it's important to me (not important generally) is because it is the thing that I'm best at in my own work. I'm no theoretical mastermind. Sure, I engage with theory, and I use theory, but theory is always a means to an end for me and not the main event. The main event for me is close reading. Maybe this is because I was educated as an undergrad at a university where the curriculum was locked in at about 1950. Maybe this is because theory makes me feel a bit insecure (which also may relate to the fact that I showed up to the party in grad school with approximately zero background in theory). Whatever the cause, though, I feel like my own work is strongest when I am performing close readings of passages from the literary texts that I study. I feel like that's where I'm making the biggest contribution to Thought and where I am most successful at persuading an audience to agree with my arguments. Theory helps me do that - it's a tool - but theory is not my bread and butter.

And I don't think it is for most literary critics. I remember when I was working on my MA my literary theory professor noting that neither he nor anyone he knew was ever going to be a brilliant theorist - that one had to know how to do close readings because only a select few would get to be true theory specialists. I remember deciding at that point that I needed to accept the reality that I, too, would never be a theory specialist - an expert who got to write theoretical tracts - and it was comforting to have a model for that being ok. It also freed me from having to identify as a "Foucauldian" or a "Lacanian" or a "Derridean" or whatever. No, I'm just a critic, thanks very much, and I'll use whatever theories get me where I'm trying to go. But I digress.

I suppose my point, though, is that some of my emphasis on careful, close reading may have everything to do with my own proclivities, criticism-wise. And so I may just be training up a bunch of acolytes, which is an exercise in narcissism more than it's an exercise in thoughtful pedagogy.

But let's put that dirty little secret to the side for a moment. Why is close reading important, objectively. Gallop argued that it's important because it is the specialized skill of our discipline, and I agree with that. But I also want to go deeper. Why is it, in itself, important?

• It's important because if we abandon the text for our own responses - whether informed by theory or informed by our life experiences - we're not really analyzing literature. We're not really reading. We're talking about ourselves and not about art.
• It's important because staying wed to the text is what forces us to question our own preconceived notions about what is true and what is real.
  
• It's important because in looking closely at a passage of text we discover new portals through which we can enter into culture, and those new portals allow for us to see our culture or the cultures of those who precede us from different perspectives, perspectives which would be unavailable if we didn't find the portals through which to reach them.
• It's important because careful, close reading reveals to us that there is no one true meaning but that meaning is contingent upon circumstance and context. (And so what I'm talking about here is clearly not a New Critic's version of close reading.)
• It's important because it challenges us to justify our initial impressions rather than to accept them at face value.
• It's important because it's fun. That's right. It's pleasurable to immerse oneself in a passage of text and to tease out its various meanings.
• It's important because it allows us to have a conversation, with the author, with critics who've come before us, with people who are reading that same passage of text simultaneously with us but whom we've never met.
• And finally, it's an important life skill. It's that ephemeral thing that we talk about when we use those impenetrable words "critical thinking." When I use the words "critical thinking," what I mean is careful analysis of something that aims to take it apart and figure out how it fits into a broader frame of reference. That is what close reading is.

Close reading also gives one the tools to "read" one's real life in ways that are entirely unhealthy, that cause non-specialists to complain that one "thinks too much" or "reads too much into things," but so far as I can tell this is the only drawback.

My ability to "close read" also makes me better able to respond to all students' work - even the best and the brightest of them - critically. It means that no student of mine gets a paper on it with a random "good" in the margin as the only comment. It means that when my students receive their papers back tomorrow that they will initially be horrified at the ink that bleeds all over them.

But so yeah. Who knew that grading would inspire me? That grading, of all things, would make me have something to post about - something real, that wasn't just a complaint about grading? That my blogging mojo would come back with such a vengeance after days and days of having not a single idea for a decent post? So thank you, my students, who wrote papers that were less than stellar though not altogether horrifying. Dr. Crazy is in your debt.

On Being Challenged

Ok, so yesterday I said I wanted to write a post responding to the posts to which I linked (and I'm not doing it again because I'm lazy), but somehow I couldn't organize my thoughts enough in order to write anything that made sense. To summarize what other people said, Aspazia began the conversation by talking about the ways in which younger female faculty are challenged - quite literally, by students and by colleagues - in ways that male faculty don't face, and while many women said the equivalent of, "Sing it to me, Sister!" others responded with, "Hey, I'm oppressed, too! What do you mean women have it rough?" or "While it is true that women have it rough, I too have it rough even though I look like I'm part of a group that doesn't." (For a great recap of the discussion, check out this post over at Blogher.)

Now, I feel like I've posted about this issue before - maybe on this blog or maybe on my previous blog - I don't know. But there ARE very real ways in which younger female faculty are "challenged" beyond their male counterparts. While it's true that all faculty members face challenges, students are, in my experience, much more likely to back down in the face of a male prof's authority. Or, conversely, students are much less likely to dismiss a male prof's authority if the male prof exhibits some flexibility or is, I don't know, nice or kind to students. I think that this is fairly standard stuff. But the reason that I want to write about it again (because how could I not have written about this even though a quick search makes it seem like I haven't?) is because I hate the way that discussions like this often end up being about measuring pain or oppression or victimization by the cold, hard world that is the academy or whatever.

This is not to say that this profession doesn't have many victims. Not at all. But I hate it when a discussion about equity in one specific area is perverted into a discussion about the ways in which people from other identity categories have it bad, too, which then serves to invalidate or to obscure the original discussion. This happens all the time in discussions in my discipline specifically because of the horrible job market. Everybody has a tale of woe, and so it's very difficult to separate out anything from that. It's very easy to dismiss this kind of discussion because there's always a counter: "But what about adjuncts? They have it worse than you, oh woman on the tenure-track. Or what about women of color? How can you, white girl who's had it so easy, claim to have problems? Or what about people who are younger/older, gay, who have to care for children or elderly parents or who are married and can't live with their significant others- " blah blah fucking blah.

I'm not trying to dismiss the experiences of those groups (in spite of the blah blah fucking blah above) but at the same time, when the discussion takes this turn, it basically stops all discussions cold. So I think there's value in limiting the discussion, if only because I'm much more interested in trying to come up with strategies for change rather than in measuring pain or difficulty or whatever it is we're measuring when we start comparing one group's (or person's) experience to another's.

Ok, so now that I've gotten that off my chest, what do I think about the issue at hand - the unique challenges that women faculty face when they're on the tenure track?

First, I'd say that while the challenges themselves are not necessarily unique (difficult students, challenges to authority, issues with evaluations, being sucked into more service than perhaps is appropriate), the ways in which women must face these challenges and attempt to handle them are. And if we're going to have this conversation, we've also (I think) got to discuss the way that discipline and/or subspecialty within a discipline factors into these issues.

As I see it, the circumstances that affect me (and I'm only going to talk about me here, as I know most about my experiences in this context) in dealing with life on the tenure-track are as follows:

English, as a discipline, is perceived as being sort of warm and fuzzy, and students often think that there is no "objective" measure of merit.
This comes into play particularly in classes that are for non-majors, whether we're talking about writing classes or classes or literature classes that fill general education requirements, the "service" classes of my discipline. Whereas students who enter a math or science class accept that there are "right" answers, students who enter an English class often think that their "experience" of a text or their "interpretation" of an assignment trumps everything else. Thus, if a faculty member (male or female) doesn't set up clear expectations, he or she will be in for trouble. That said, what counts as "clarity" is gendered in our culture. Students will often expect a female faculty member to provide step-by-step instructions in a way that they do not expect male faculty members to do. If one compares syllabi or assignments between male and female faculty members, one can often see this difference manifested. I have male colleagues whose syllabi are incredibly brief, whose assignments consist of a prompt and little else. Students do not give them low evaluations for clarity nor do they give them low evaluations for preparation of material. Moreover, students seem to accept that if they need further clarification that it is their responsibility to seek it from the male faculty member. In contrast, students may receive mountains of paper explaining things from female faculty members, but nevertheless, they will complain that the expectations were not "clear." One might argue that the mountains of paper in fact obscure clarity. But if the female faculty member does not provide those, then she has no recourse when the student does not meet the expectation and then challenges her policies. It's a catch-22.

Moreover, in these classes a lot of what we're teaching is that one's opinion, if it is not rooted in the text, does not have authority. This goes against what students seem to learn throughout their K-12 education and what students see in popular culture about how to evaluate texts (think Oprah's book club). And so students will often enter, say, my intro to lit course with the attitude that all opinions about a literary text count equally, and that they are as equipped to judge a text's merit as somebody, say, with a PhD. They enter my male colleague's classes with the same attitude. That said, some students think that because I'm a woman I do not have the authority to challenge them in the classroom. They perceive any challenges that I do make to their claims as without authority and as without foundation because of expectations that they have about me based on gender. For this reason, I've learned to consider gender as I approach challenging my students about their ideas, to conform to certain kinds of gender expectations even as I challenge them.

Area of specialization does make a difference.
I do notice a distinct difference between how students in general education type classes respond to me and in how my upper-level students respond to me, and I don't think that this is purely based on the fact that the students are more mature. I think that subject matter plays a key role in my ability to exude and to exert authority in my classes. The upper level courses that I teach are in my field of specialization, which is a somewhat "masculine" (read: difficult) field. It is very difficult to reduce one's readings of these texts to "identifying" with one character or another or to any sort of personal satisfaction that one might feel at the end of a reading assignment. (In fact, there is often no sense of satisfaction provided by the narratives of things that I teach, which students often find frustrating.) Because the texts tend to be so seemingly impenetrable, students characterize me as "the subject who knows" in my upper level courses, and they are much more willing to accept my authority in other areas because of that. In contrast, in most of my lower-level classes (with one exception), in which I often teach more accessible texts, students are much less likely to grant me the same kind of authority.

Department and local culture is also a factor.
While it is true that English is a feminized discipline and that there are generally more female than male professors in most departments, all of my department leadership (and most of the tenured professors, and I think, if I'm not mistaken, all of the full professors in the department) are male. This sends a message to students that women are kind of subordinate professors, helper professors, who don't really count. Moreover, this area is very conservative, so most students (male and female) themselves embody very traditional gender roles and have very traditional expectations for how women and men should behave and what kinds of roles that women and men should play. This means that they respond to me in certain ways that I don't think students in other localities or at other universities would.

So how have I dealt with all of this?
Well, part of how I've dealt with it, which may seem counterintuitive, is to relax a little bit about the authority stuff. I run my class the way I run it - take it or leave it - and I don't worry so much anymore about keeping up an authoritative front. If students are going to respond to me as a woman first - let them - I just need to make sure that they realize that it won't make one bit of difference in terms of how well or poorly they do in my courses. The second thing is that I nip all challenges to my classroom administration in the bud. Immediately. In class. If a student shows up late, I call them out on it right then - I don't keep them after class and gently mention it to them so as to keep their pride intact. If students are talking while I'm presenting material, I stop, and I stare at them until they shut up. After the first two weeks, these things stop happening. I also am very vocal about issues I face in my classroom with my higher-ups, which I think helps in that I get their support from the get-go and if things come up later, they are less likely to affect how my higher-ups perceive me.

There are other things, but this post is going on too long and I need to stop blogging and start my day. I suppose the ultimate point, however, is that dealing with this crap is an ongoing process. I think (or hope) that things will improve once I get tenure, once I look a little older, or once I get a wedding ring on my finger (for with that ring - and with children - does come a certain kind of authority that I do not have, at least at this institution). The thing for me, though, is not to get bogged down in thinking about these issues, because doing so drives one crazy. And that has gotten easier, especially as I've taught so much in the past three years that I've got prep down to a science and running a class is like riding a bike. (In some ways I think that this is the biggest benefit of the 4/4 - much less time to agonize about abstract things like "authority" or to worry about preparation or overpreparation.)

So I hope this post contributes positively to the ongoing discussion. Though I really do apologize for how long the thing is - I didn't think I had so much to say!

More on Teaching, or, Yes, You Really Do Need to Come to Class

Hmmm. How to begin this post?

The semester is off and running (I'm already in my third week) and it's about that time where bigger assignments are coming due in my courses. Not big-big, but formal, graded assignments. And a few students have either missed class, come late to class, or zoned out during class, and this means that they've missed crucial announcements. And it's got me thinking because I'm wondering whether this is a weakness in my classroom administration or whether it's actually not my problem.

I suppose I should give some background. In all of my courses, I distribute a pretty explicit syllabus (course schedule and course policies). Each class meeting is listed on the schedule, and next to each date is the reading assignment for the day (title of text) as well as any out-of-class assignments that are due. As for the course policies, well, I make it clear that attendance is mandatory. I also make it clear that you've got to have the text for the day with you in class, and all of that other neato stuff that you're supposed to put in your course policies.

I don't, however, include page numbers (if we're covering a text over multiple class meetings) nor do I include what exactly we will do in class (because, well, it changes from year to year, semester to semester, class to class). I also don't have a really hard-core attendance policy where after a certain number of absences your total grade for the course goes down or where you automatically fail (though attendance does affect your participation grade). So it's pretty explicit, but not suffocatingly so. There is room for me to move within the explicit course schedule that I design. And I ALWAYS stay on schedule. Not since my first year on the t-t have I deviated either by removing texts or by changing dates on which assignments are due.

I should also say that I hand out all out-of-class assignments with ample time (usually one week, sometimes more (I hand out all assignments for upper-level classes on the first day), sometimes just less than a week if it's an "ungraded" assignment) for students to get going on them, I give out review sheets if we're to have a test or exam (also within 5-7 days), and I always spend at least a little class time before the first graded assignment in any course going over what they need to do and what my expectations are.

So far, so good, right? And remember, I do emphasize attendance and being on time, and so if students just show up on time and stay awake, students should know exactly what we're doing, right?

But the rub is that because I assume that students attend, and by attendance I mean being on time and being there not only physically but also being there mentally, not everything is written out and set in stone on the syllabus. I don't necessarily say on the syllabus when I will go over the first graded assignment; I don't necessarily say what exactly the reading assignment for the next class is until the class before. In my mind, this allows for flexibility. It means that if we don't get far enough in discussion one day on a text that is stretching over multiple class periods (for example) that I can assign a little less reading for the next class. Or, if we cover a lot in a day, we can go a little farther for the next class period. And while my assignments state the basic requirements for what they need to do, on, say, a paper, I do tend to give supplementary information about my expectations in class, if there is supplementary info to give. I don't state "I'll give out the pages to read for the next class" on the syllabus, nor do I necessarily say "I'll be talking about the test or paper or whatever on this date" on the syllabus. To me, this is what coming to class is about - getting this supplementary info. If you aren't in class, my theory is that you should just do all of the assigned reading (or guesstimate about what we'll be able to cover in a class period) or that you'll go it alone on the assignment, which you've already received. If you miss class before a test, you should assume everything we've covered to that point should be something that you study.

Moreover, if I've got handouts or assignments to give, related to course material, I don't necessarily keep them in my bag throughout the entire semester. Sometimes I clean out my bag, so I don't have everything I've ever handed out with me. It states clearly in my course policies that if you miss class you need to ask somebody else in the class what you missed - not me. If a student misses a handout or an assignment, I expect them to ask me for it when they've found out they missed it from a classmate. And if I don't have it with me, I tell them to email me, and I'll be happy to send it to them as an attachment. In some classes I even post assignments online so that they can just go to the website to retrieve them.

So. I've got these students. They've not attended class, or they've come late, or they've left early, or they fell asleep. To me, they're adults. If they miss stuff, they miss stuff. It's their responsibility to find out what they missed. But at the same time, if they're missing so much stuff, and then they don't turn things in when it says that they are due on the syllabus, why are they taking the class at all? What can they hope to get out of it, and what am I supposed to do to teach them if they're not there to teach?

My thought at this point is that it's not really my problem. I'm very clear - from the first day of class on - about what my expectations are and what their responsibilities and my responsibilities are. But I don't know. What if what I'm describing here is not flexibility but rather lack of organization on my part? My preference would be to maintain in the fashion that I've been going, in part because I hated as a student syllabi that constantly changed, that were so rigid that they could not be followed. And I do think there needs to be wiggle room - not only in syllabi, but also in assignments. So my question for you, readers, is whether you think I'm being unreasonable. And if you do, what would you suggest I do to become more reasonable?

Some Thoughts about Teaching

Last night, I read this post, and it got me thinking. Manorama writes about her teaching experience and the choices that she makes for evaluating students. This is a follow-up post to some that she'd written at the end of last semester about the time it takes her to evaluate students for participation. Now, I responded to those posts, as did some others, but I think that she felt like those who responding weren't acknowledging her authority to make decisions about pedagogy in her classes, even though I'll at least say for my part that I didn't think I was doing that at all but rather that I thought I was giving advice that might be of use and trying to be supportive.

Anyway, in her most recent post, Manorama writes about why she chooses to invest as much in evaluating participation as she does. It's an interesting post, and worth checking out. That said, it's kind of long, and so my post here is really only responding to one line of argument that has been on my mind since I read the post last night.

Manorama writes,

"Coming up with a way to run a class where so many concerns are addressed is difficult, and it takes a special amount of effort to teach in a way that is consistent with my values as a scholar. That is, I will not sacrifice careful attention to history and literary criticism. I will not sacrifice the student leadership over the class because the critical thinking process I want them to practice requires them to be active leaders and discussants, not passive minds who aren't thinking, talking, listening, and writing in response to the text and to others. [. . .] If this is the kind of class I design, you can imagine why I would find it dishonest and unfair to pretend that I remember who "participated" and who didn't."

In this passage (if you want to see the entire paragraph please head on over to her post), the argument seems to be an ethical one, i.e., that those who do not take an approach to participation that details each and every student contribution sacrifice rigor in their courses and that they fail to give students ownership over the class - they fail to be "learner-centered" to use the jargon of the day. Moreover, those who do not demonstrate value through this kind of approach to grading may be accused of dishonesty and lack of fairness in their courses. One's choices become evidence of one's values, and, it is implied, that those who make different choices do not share Manorama's scholarly values.

This argument doesn't really work for me. First, I'm not sure that every single composition or literature course needs to or benefits from emphasizing history and literary criticism, even if one values those things. At least in my experience, with the kind of students whom I teach, I have found that all classes can't necessarily do that work in a way that is effective. Moreover, I think that there is something of value in emphasizing in my lower level courses students' own reading practices and translating those into solid writing. Now, I do not teach at a research university, and many of my students come into my courses having very limited backgrounds with academic analysis, reading, and writing. I usually have at least one student a semester who claims never to have read an entire book. What that means is that I need to lay a kind of foundation for my students in lower level courses that I did not have to lay at my grad institution. This does not mean that I don't value literary critical and historical context, but it does mean that I know that I get multiple bites at the apple. If a student has me in one class, it's not terribly unlikely that I'll never see that student again. In fact, it is often quite likely that I will have a student whom I've had for freshmen writing at least once if not twice or three times more before they graduate. Thus, I think that what I value as a scholar in that regard does have a link to what goes on in my classes, but I think that I think about it in a way that is incremental, and this means that it does not evidence itself in obvious ways in every one of my classes. Does that mean I don't "really" value those things? How do we judge that sort of thing? (I'll come back to this later in the post, as I'm not just asking for rhetorical effect.)

I also have difficulty with the argument that evaluating all aspects of what students do in a class in a very detailed way teaches students to approach their education as active rather than passive. To me, if they're only actively discussing for a grade, that is passive. It's not self-motivated, no matter how much they talk or how much work they do on their own. At the same time, I know that if one doesn't demonstrate as an instructor that one values active discussion, etc., that it won't necessarily happen in the classroom. I think that my approach to this is somewhat different from Manorama's because I work very hard to disrupt the active learning stuff from grades because of what I see as a contradiction between one and the other. If I am grading and reacting everything, I'm asserting my authority over every single thing that they do. I'm not saying that this is how it works in every person's classroom, mind you, but it is how it works in mine. The minute that I get out the red (or green, or purple, or whatever) pen, I'm judging, and if I attach a letter grade to something, students begin aiming for the grade instead of engaging with the material on its own. That has as much to do with my style as anything, and so I suppose that this is the point for me: there isn't a one-size-fits-all model to this stuff. The compromise that I make is that yes, students receive various kinds of grades for participation at the end of the course, but much of that grade comes from adequate completion of discrete tasks. Example: my students in upper level courses have to post on a discussion board once a week. If you do the required number of posts, you get an A. Now, I participate in the discussion and lead it, but I don't give a grade for the quality of the posts. This means that students can make of this discussion what they will, and I think this is valuable. You might say, "but it's not giving credit to those who do very well on this task in the class," but what they do on the task without fail translates into how they do on more conventionally graded assignments, so to me, this does teach them to actively engage and it does value active engagement while at the same time it gives them the responsibilty for using the assignment in such a way that it is meaningful. I police them only to the extent that I pay attention to who is posting and who isn't, and otherwise my role is pretty hands off - I just discuss along with them. Now, my authority is not entirely dispersed - they know I'm reading these posts - but it also is not absolute in the way that it would be were I grading them for quality on such an assignment. This is just one example, but I tend to like to incorporate similar kinds of assignments into all of my classes in some fashion or another because I think it gives students confidence to play with ideas without fear of negative consequences, which I think goes a long way toward inspiring active engagement.

Manorama later in her post continues:

"This is because if we really believe that writing is a process, that classroom interactions and involvement in an "academic community" is important, that "participation" means something other than giving us something to do each day so we can get paid, and that collegiality and professionalism are key resources for anyone doing literary study, then showing students that we value those processes and are assessing them is very, very important. Showing them that what they think and what they say is valuable, not just in the "finished product" but throughout the process, is important.
[. . .]
In the end, it just might come down to what we value, and how we show that we value it. Most of us, I assume, value our students' contributions and intellectual work throughout their intellectual journey in the class. How do we show that we value it?"

Now, this is a lot to which to respond, especially since I was one of the people who commented originally that I tend to be much looser in my approach to evaluating participation in my courses. But I think the reason that Manorama's post has been on my mind is that it goes back to some of the things that I've been thinking about how to measure "value" related to blogging and to service. I'm not sure if I agree that the way to demonstrate what we value is (only) through grading, just as I'm not sure that the only things that I do that have value are those that get listed on the cv or that count toward tenure. To me, the value in a liberal arts education is precisely that these objective measures don't capture all of what we value, and I think there is utility in challenging those objective measures even as we work within systems that require them. I guess what I'm playing with - both in relation to my work as a professor generally and in the classroom - is trying to break from equating value with things that "count" in traditional ways. I'm not sure if this is sensible (or if it's even possible) but that is something that's really interesting to me, and I think that it's something that's useful to consider.

And So the Semester Is Underway

I know I've been a bad blogger of late. It's not that there hasn't been anything to write about (there has) but all of my writing mojo has gone toward other things, and so I've been doing more blog reading than blog writing as a result. (I point to this as evidence that blog writing is, at least in my case, deeply linked to any other kind of writing that I do, even if I am an academic who blogs vs. being an academic blogger or whatever way we're marking that distinction these days. Maybe I'm not writing a literary critical or theoretical blog, but the blog surely keeps me in a writing groove in a way that no other kind of less formal writing has, and so when I have to direct my attention to the formal stuff, the blog suffers.)

Anyway, though, this isn't a post about my stupid blog - I want it to be a post, rather, about my sense of what this semester is going to be like. I'm two weeks in already, I've graded one set of papers in my writing class, I've graded one set of quizzes from my lower-level lit course, and I've seen some online discussion responses from my upper-level lit students. In other words, I think I'm at a point where I can project how things are going to go and where I want to go from here with these classes.

First things first: at least at this point, I think I'm pretty lucky with the writing class. Sure, some of them are terrible writers, but at least so far, the class discussions have tended to be quite dynamic, and they seem to be really engaged with what I'm doing with them, or at least willing to put up with what I'm making them do. I've tried to make more of an effort to put each thing I'm asking of them into context with my broader goals for the course, and I think that doing that jedi mind trick stuff seems to be having a positive effect. Now, there is one girl with a sour expression who has NEVER been on time, and I think she may become a problem if she doesn't get it together. I've called her out on the tardiness thing - I start on time, so you've got to be there on time, etc. - and what she said last class was "at least it was only five minutes this time." That kind of response totally does not bode well. I've also got a couple of the kind in there who like to tell you even though you don't know them yet about all of their woes and troubles - but I think I've headed them off at the pass. And then I had another who commented on my age in the "you're not old enough to be a professor" way. I suppose I'll miss that when I start looking old enough to be a professor, but at this point it still really pisses me off. I'm not exactly the Doogie Howser of the professorial track, you know. But, in spite of the above, I'm actually feeling pretty ok about the writing class. I think that I will manage through the end of the semester, at any rate.

The class I'm most excited about is the upper-level class. The initial drop/add period is done, and it looks like I've only lost 2 of those originally enrolled, which is pretty awesome, given the amount of reading and work I expect in my classes. So far they seem to be a really good and engaged group, although they do seem to want me to spoon-feed background to them and to tell them what a text "means" more than I'd like. I'm hoping that this is alleviated once they start giving their presentations. I'm also going to have to start arranging them in a circle for discussion, and luckily I've got a room that will accommodate this. Another reason that I want to do the circle thing is that in contrast to last semester, when I had the Class of Women, this class is pretty evenly divided between male and female students, and the male students tend to be quite dynamic. One problem that I know I have is that I respond to dynamic, and so unless I'm careful, I will let those three or four students dominate the discussion and it will become a really bogus class. (I think the issue is that I myself was a dynamic participator and so I don't really understand the non-dynamic kind of student. Nevertheless, because I understand the dynamic participators, I also know that they can be a bunch of blowhards who don't really have substantive stuff to contribute, and so I know that as a teacher, however much I might like to listen to them (and myself) talk, I've got to open the discussion up to the quieter ones in the bunch and to make sure that the women don't get shut out of the conversation.) At any rate though, I'm wicked excited about this class, and I really do have high hopes for it.

Finally, in a weird twist, the class I'm most concerned about and potentially least excited about is the one that is usually my favorite course to teach. It's big - which is part of the issue but it's no bigger than usual, really, just I don't know as many students from previous classes so it feels bigger - and there were some late adds - another part of the issue - and well, they all seem really tired. I mean, I open the semester with some pretty shocking stuff, and normally students have a lot to say (which is the point of opening with that kind of thing). These ones just looked at me like their sensibilities were offended and like I was a lunatic. I toned things down last class, and they all looked at me like they were zombies or on drugs or something. They did better when I had them do group work and then we reconvened, so we'll be doing more of that, but that's not a solution to this problem. I've got to do something to get the whole class more engaged. I think one thing that may be catching me up is that I don't have as many "frequent flyers" in the class as I usually do, and with the number of students in there I'm having a hard time learning names. (I always feel like it's easier to control a class dynamic once I know who the students are.) I don't know. They all just seem really passive. Like they are less interested in talking about the content of what we've read than they are in doing discrete tasks like scanning lines of poetry. (We start with poetry, and yes, I still teach how to scan a line.) Also, for the first time ever, I've had to tell that class to take notes. Usually in my classes, students take notes furiously. Without my telling them to. I don't know. I suppose I'm feeling a bit unsure of what will happen with this group. And it sucks because usually this course is one that I don't need to think too much about.

Then there is the Quasi-Admin gig I'm doing, and that hasn't really gotten off the ground for the semester, though I suppose it will in the coming weeks.

So anyway, that's all of what I've been doing/thinking about instead of writing on the blog. Ok, now to get myself in gear and go teach.

Leading a Reading Group

Ok, so I've mentioned in an off-hand sort of way that I might be leading a reading group for students interested in reading Notoriously Difficult Novel. (I don't want them to find this via googling, if they're looking for insights on NDN, so let's just say that NDN is a remake of The Odyssey.) It looks like this reading group is, indeed, going to happen. And I wondered whether I should blog about this experience, but I've decided I should in part so that I can call on all of you who've either run or participated in reading groups for any expertise you might be able to offer. But also, I think I want to write about this because I'm so proud that it's even happening at all.

I teach at a regional university in an urban area. The majority of the students who attend this university are in the first generation in their family to attend college. The majority of these students live at home with their families, work at least 20-25 hours per week, and many work as many as 50-60 hours per week, while maintaining outrageously high (think 15 hours or 18 hours, doing all of one's classes back to back either on MWF or on T/H) course loads. Many of these students, regardless of age, also have family responsibilities, whether those include caring for siblings and/or ailing parents (many people in this region have large families, so it's not uncommon for my students to be one of 5-8 children, and if they're on the older end of things, that often means that they have responsibilities related to their younger siblings' care) or caring for children of their own.

You can imagine what this means for "campus life" at the university. There really isn't much. Nor is there much intellectual curiosity or deep drive to brown-nose, as there might be at, say, a liberal arts college, and so something like a "reading group" as far as I'm aware is an entirely foreign concept to most of them. And I've got to say, the idea of a "reading group" would have been foreign to me as an undergraduate, too - my own background, while not quite as complicated as the backgrounds of many of my students, was such that I, too, worked a lot during college, took ridiculously high course loads, and didn't really do much intellectual work outside of the classes that I took during a given semester. Then, in graduate school, while I heard of people organizing reading groups, I never participated. I'm kind of a "lone reader" by nature - hate the idea of being responsible to a group for my reading, and hate the idea of having to read what others are reading whether I'm in the mood for it or not.

So yeah. I don't know what made me suggest a reading group last semester, because the likelihood of students wanting to do it had to be pretty small, and I don't know crap about how to run a reading group or how to be in one because I have always shunned them on principle. But they do want to do it. A LOT of them want to do it. And so now I've got to do this thing, right? And while I'm excited about it, I'm also a bit... unsure of myself. One thing is that I don't want to be "the teacher" of this book. I'm happy to help them through the book (which I think is a good thing) but I don't want to be all Dr. Crazy Lecture-y. One reason why doing this with NDN appeals to me is that I really like the idea of giving them more ownership over this text - and if this goes well, I would consider doing one of these every year - maybe even opening it up to just regular people who aren't students at my university? While I think there's value in teaching NDN in a traditional classroom setting, I just really don't know whether it's really necessary for many students to experience it in that setting - especially if they don't plan on growing up to be literary critics. If they're going to grow up and work in HR or something, really I think they just need the experience of reading the book - not of writing on it and laboring over it as I expect students in my classes to do. So I guess as I'm considering this, part of what I want to ensure is that I allow for them not to labor even though they will have to do work to interpret the text, if that makes any sense.

So anyway, we're having our first meeting next week. And I'm actually almost giddy with excitement, even though this will mean a bit more work for me and even though it's yet another time commitment. But you know what? This feels like real service to me. I'm doing this because I want to - not because a colleague begged me to do it or because it was insinuated that it would "look good" for me to do it, or because it fills in a "gap" in my service section of my cv. No, this is entirely altruistic. I haven't even told most of my colleagues about it (which I know I should, and I will get around to that, but I don't know, it's been nice not shouting about it). So anyway, I'll post periodically about how the thing goes. But for now, if you've been in a reading group or if you've run one (esp. with undergraduates) maybe you could share any tips that you have about making the thing run smoothly?

On the Somewhat Belated Arrival of Enthusiasm

For yes, my friends, it has arrived! Sure, it took its sweet time in arriving, and no, this doesn't mean that I'm all of a sudden filled with Stepford-wife-like serenity about everything, but I woke up this morning feeling... well, excited. This puts me in a much better mood about the prospect of my day, even if my day promises to be kind of crap-filled. And really - why dread the first day, no matter what class(es) one is teaching? I mean, all you really do is introduce yourself and go over the syllabus.... I should save up my angst about teaching for the much greater trials that I will face throughout the course of the semester.

Grading Essays - The Checklist

New Kid asked in comments to my last post to explain what I do with the checklist for grading and how it's not a rubric, and I thought it might be worth doing an actual post about it if others might find it useful.

First, the reason I resist rubric-method of grading student writing is that it invites complaint. "My friend got four points on this section and I got five, and I think that we both did the same on that section." I hate dealing with that kind of crap. Also, I find that it can be difficult to justify why one person gets one "number" on a given section and another gets another. Grading writing IS subjective - not entirely quantifiable. Yes, I look for certain things, but there is no one recipe for an A paper, and I think a rubric can inspire students to look for that recipe rather than focusing on the quality of their ideas and claims.

That said, I do think that the valuable thing about a rubric is that students know that you were looking for certain things on the assignment, and that you were looking for all of those things on all students' papers. I also think that the rubric can eliminate the need to compose lengthy end-comments that repeat the same things from paper to paper, which when you teach a large number of students, can become INCREDIBLY time-consuming, even if you're copying and pasting in typed comments.

So, over the past couple of years, I developed a "checklist" method that is looser than a traditional rubric (doesn't assign point values to different things) but that has some of the benefits of a rubric model. Oh, and in my lit classes, I design the checklist so that it works for each of the two papers (which are basically the same assignment - two, 3-5 page topic-driven literary analysis, for example) and can work for a range of topics - it's not intended to deal with the specifics of the paper (which I do in the marginal comments) but to deal with my overall expectations for the assignment. Also since they've got two of these papers (with different topics assigned, of course), and since the first one is weighted less than the second, the checklist on the first works as a guide for them for the second paper.

Here's how I do it. I create two columns. On the left-hand side, I list between 10 and 15 things that I was looking for in the paper. This column is labeled "Aspects of the essay that worked particularly well" or something like that. Generally, for lit classes, the top 2/3 relate to issues surrounding what I wanted them to do with the literature. Things like, "Paper responds to the assignment" or "Paper offers insights into the texts under discussion in a critical and analytical way." You get the idea. The bottom 1/3 (or so) of the list has to do with mechanical sorts of things with their writing, and their conformity to MLA style, etc. I don't tell the students how these things are weighted, but they intuitively understand that the stuff at the top is more important than the stuff at the bottom. Then, on the right hand side of the page, I have another column that is labeled, "Aspects of the paper that could have been stronger." Basically, this checklist is the inversion of the checklist on the left. So if on the left it says, "Paper offers adequate context (historical, theoretical, and/or critical) for the claims that it makes about the text(s) under discussion," on the right it says, "Paper does not offer adequate context (etc.)."

You will notice that all of these comments emphasize what the PAPER does or does not do - not what the WRITER has chosen to do. In part I do this because I think it softens my more direct marginal comments. In the margins, I tend to address the writer as "you" and to respond to the ideas that are there as the writer's ideas - not as some abstract thing inside the paper. On the checklist, I like to take some of the personal quality out in order to show them that I wasn't only responding to "them" but to what I saw in the paper as distinct from them. Also, the checklist gives me the freedom not to comment on more global issues in the margins, so in the margins I can actually respond to more specific points in the essay.

Now, what I do when I grade is this. I'll use my current batch of papers as an example. They had five topics from which to choose. First, I organize them by topic. Once I have them organized in that way, I put them in reverse order (worst to best) based on the opening few sentences of the paper. (In my experience, the opening few sentences really tell me all I need to know to assign a grade. Sometimes there are exceptions, but those are rare.) The advantage of this method is that I don't read all of the "good" papers at once, but rather I get little rewards at different points in the grading. Then, I grade the each paper, writing marginal comments as I go. When I grade for lit classes, I will note grammatical/punctuation/etc. errors the first or second time I see them - if I see more, I write in the margin something like "transitions could be stronger throughout" and leave it at that. This allows the bulk of the marginal comments to respond to the content of the paper and not to overwhelm them with copy-editing type comments. Because, as I've indicated in a few different comments I've left on other blogs lately, teaching writing is NOT the primary aim of essays assigned in literature courses, nor is it my primary aim in teaching literature. IF I leave a summation comment at the end (which I don't always do as it isn't always necessary), it's in response to how they dealt with the topic that they chose, or in response to a particular point that they made. It is NOT an overarching comment that deals with all of the stuff on the checklist. That's what the checklist is for.

Once I've done all of the marginal commenting, I then turn to the checklist, and I check off what they've done well and what could have been stronger. Visually, this shows me pretty much what grade they should get. If the checks are about 50/50 on each side, that's usually about a C - average. If it's 70-80/30-20, then the paper's in the B-range. If it's 80-90/20-10, then it's in the A-range. Invert that, and then you get a sense of the D and F range. I think this helps to keep me honest with the grading, and to detach a bit from students whom I personally like but who may not have done very well on the paper, or students whom I don't personally like who really did a good job. Again, though, this is not outlined on a point system, which I would fudge anyway in order to give the grade that I thought the paper earned. It's just a rough guide for how grades in certain ranges look on the checklist, and so if students who got grades in the same range were to compare their checklists, the checklists look very similar. Once I've done all of the checking off, I attach the checklist page to the top of the document. The checklist page does not include the grade. One reason I do this is because I do comment a lot in the margins, and it can freak students out, even though I give as many or more positive and/or just-engaging-with-the-ideas comments as I do negative ones. Having every paper look the same when they get it back I think makes it easier for them to deal. I also don't put the grade on the checklist 1) because that keeps students' grades more private and 2) if they saw the grade on the top, they would probably just ignore the actual comments on the checklist. (I put the grade either on the first or last page of their actual paper.)

Another reason that I like this method is that it means I tend to comment as much on the great papers as I do on the less great ones. One thing that often happens to students who are strong writers is that they get almost no actual feedback on their writing. (This is what happened to me throughout my undergraduate education.) A "Great!" on top of a paper does not feedback make. That said, it can be really time-consuming to write an end comment with all of the ways in which the essay was successful. The checklist means that I'm not tempted to ignore those things that students did succeed at in the interest of time. Also, because the checklist handles all of the main things that I'm looking for in the essay, it means that I can respond to whatever interests me in the margins without feeling like I'm not "justifying the grade." I never think of grading in those terms anymore - I really think of it as something that allows me to interact with my students one-on-one, and that is actually something I like (even if grading still blows).

And you may be wondering, how does this all work out time-wise for the grading? Well, in the past, when I did the extended final commenting and didn't use checklists, it could take an hour per paper, which is outrageous for 3-5 page papers. I'd estimate that my current method means I come in at around 15-20 mins. a paper tops (and again, I comment EXTENSIVELY on ALL of them), which means for this batch of around 20 papers, I'll spend no more than 6 hours or so on grading. To give you a sense, last night I graded from around 11 PM to around 1:30 AM with frequent (and sometimes lengthy- like when I composed that blog post, or another few times when I commented on blogs or composed emails- breaks). In that time, I graded 7 papers. I really don't think it's possible to grade any more quickly than that.

Day One of the Semester a Success (I suppose)

Though I will say this: I need to get better on the time management tip, so as to take advantage of being done with teaching so early on the days that I got reassigned time. If I "reassign" the time from my classroom to my office, that seems kind of lame. At any rate, here's what I accomplished today:

• Updated my website
• Came up with 14 online discussion-board prompts for my upper-div. class
• Held first class with my freshmen (who seem like a good group and very sweet and wet behind the ears)
• Emailed VSC re: letter
• Emailed grad school administrative person re: getting new letters sent to include in my file
• Did some work for my quasi-admin position
• Checked to make sure all materials requested to be put on electronic reserve have in fact been put there (and they have - yippee!)
• Chatted for a long while with new colleague, on whose search committee I served last year.
  

It's so weird how easy it is to get back in the swing of things. Not that I think anybody should have to be back in the swing as early as Aug. 21st, because I don't. But apparently I am.

So the plan for the rest of my day is to go to the gym, cook something yummy for dinner, and go to bed early (I hope) so as not to have the misery that I had in waking this morning (because I'm WAY off schedule).

Oh, and rather than do an individual post in response to the Potter comment thread, let me just say right here:

Why do I think that Luna and Harry are an odd, and yet destined, couple?
1. The only thing that Harry and Ginny really have in common is Quidditch and Ginny's family. To me, this is a relationship of convenience more than a true meeting of souls/hearts/minds.
2. On the other hand, Luna, too, has a dead mother, can see the thestrals, knows what it is to be awkward and an outsider. (Some might argue that Harry is Mr. Popularity, but I would argue that he's stigmatized by his scar and what happened to him, and that there are a number of periods where he is ostracized by his peers.)
3. J.K. Rowling has said that Luna and Neville definitely are not a love match because ultimately all they have in common is that they're kind of losers in the Hogwarts world. Given the way that the last book was all about pairing people off, and given that Luna and Neville both continue to increase in their importance as the books go on, it would strike me as odd that she just intends for each of them to be lonely and alone forever.
4. Remember that Neville took Ginny to the Ball in Goblet of Fire. Also think about how being with somebody like Ginny could potentially serve to bring Neville out of his shell and make him more awesome and confident. Just think about it.
5. I think it would be creepy for Harry to end up with Ginny because it's like a weird oedipal thing in which Harry is going after the one girl at the school that is like his mom (long red hair, really powerful witch, popular, etc.).

Teaching As a Job - What I Wish I'd Learned in Grad School

Well, George just sent out the call for us to dust off our posting-about-teaching fingers, as summer vacation is coming to an end, and the Teaching Carnival schedule for Fall is all lined up, and so I thought, since I'm procrastinating, that I'd do a post related to one of the suggested topics that George mentioned.

George asks:
"What kind of preparation for teaching did you get in grad school? Was it adequate? What should have been done differently? How are you preparing the next generation of grad students for the classroom? How does the way you were taught affect the way you teach?"

These are all interesting questions, and ones that I've thought about a great deal since landing in a tenure-track job at a regional comprehensive university right out of graduate school at a prestigious sort of research university. Well, not the part about "preparing" the next generation of graduate students, as I don't have any to prepare. But the rest of it? Yes. So here it goes.

What kind of preparation for teaching did you get in grad school?
Well, I actually got quite a bit of preparation. First, in my MA program, I took a course (worth actual graduate credit toward the degree and required of all who wanted to teach in the program) that was all about teaching college writing. It was both theoretical and practical; it included doing things like constructing assignment sequences and syllabi as well as reading about theories behind why we teach writing in particular ways. It also required that we tutor in the writing center at the university, and that we "shadow" another instructor for much of the semester, and that instructor (also a grad student who'd been through the course) would allow us to run certain section meetings, would xerox the papers that students submitted so we could practice grading and get feedback on it, etc. This was a really, really excellent experience for me and an excellent introduction to teaching in the composition classroom.

In my PhD program, we were required to take a course (for which we got no credit, and which only lasted like half a semester or something) that was supposed to do the same thing that the course I took in my MA did. It was much more heavily theoretical, and I felt like it wasn't particularly enlightening.

Then, in my PhD program, we also TA'd. This was the only "training" in teaching literature that we received, and experiences varied widely depending upon what professor one TA'd for. In some cases, one was pretty much there to grade and to take attendance and to show movies that were scheduled outside of class time. In other cases, there was more "training" in things like leading discussion, lecturing, developing assignments, etc. It really just depended. Oh, and there was no guarantee that you would actually get the chance to TA in your field of specialization. None of my three TA-ships were in my specialty. Oh, and there was no opportunity for grad students to teach literature classes at my PhD-granting university. And according to our contracts, we weren't to teach outside of the program - or even work outside of the program - so most people did not adjunct elsewhere during the term of their funding (4-5 years).

Was it adequate? What should have been done differently?
Well, see, this is where it gets sticky. Was it adequate? Well, I left graduate school with teaching experience. I wasn't entirely clueless about how to run a classroom. I had a "teaching philosophy." I had a commitment to good teaching and to developing as a teacher. I'm not entirely sure whether one can expect to come out with anything more than that, really.

But. Being a "teacher" at my current institution bears little resemblance to much of what I learned about "teaching" in graduate school. Why?

1. It is a very different thing to teach one or two classes in a semester, with no other obligations, really, other than a couple of classes and/or one's own research, than to teach four classes in a semester, with many other obligations in addition to one's own research (ha!). I did not learn in graduate school how to manage my time as a teacher. I did not learn how to budget my time in order to use it where it would be most effective.
2. The practice of having TA's give one lecture a semester, as if this will "prepare" graduate students for what it is to get up EVERY SINGLE DAY in class, is just silly. And this is what they did in my grad program. I'm not sure what else can be done, really, if one doesn't allow grad students to teach lit classes, and commit to evaluating how they do in those lit classes, but the reality is that I pretty much lecture in each course only one or two days in the course of an entire semester. I don't teach huge classes (because the rooms at my institution are too small, so class sizes are small as well) and lecturing feels ridiculous when you're in a tiny, crummy room with only 25 people.
   
3. No one really taught me in graduate school how to combine my teaching obligations with my research interests. I guess this goes along with the time management thing. This was something I had to figure out how to do once I got here, and luckily I did. If all of one's mentors view research as "their own work" that is entirely distinct from teaching, it gives a person who ends up in a place with a less than fabulous teaching load very little preparation for how to squeeze in one's "own work" without dying.
   
4. I have no idea what my "teaching philosophy" was in my job applications a few years ago (though I will need to dust that document off) but my real life teaching philosophy now (and not what is in The Notebook, thank you very much) is something along the lines of That Which Does Not Kill You Makes You Stronger combined with Sometimes It's Ok to Half-Ass It. In other words, I'm just trying to get by a lot of the time, and I've had to learn how to put things like eating a decent meal and having some down time for myself ahead of any fancy philosophical notions that I had about teaching in grad school. That isn't to say that I don't care about my teaching. I do. But to care about it in the way that I learned to care about it in grad school would pretty much kill me if I tried it now.
5. I don't think I realized how much PR was involved in teaching as a grad student. Now I've got to advertise my courses, send my students subliminal messages so as to get good evaluations, etc. I think that perhaps a bit of training in that area would be a good thing, as it is the reality at many institutions. I realize that's not technically "teaching," but it is related to the teaching part of the job.

How does the way you were taught affect the way you teach?
You may think that the way I was taught doesn't affect the way that I teach, from what I've written above. But I actually see the influence of the teachers I've admired all over my teaching. The difficulty of the texts that I assign, the level of responsibility I expect of my students for their work, the kinds of tests and assignments that I design - all of this goes back to the way that I was taught. And then there is the way that I respond to students who are off the wall and just plain wrong, which apparently I inherited directly from my dissertation director. But you'll notice that these influences are mostly models for teaching - not actual teaching about teaching. And I wonder whether it really can be much different from that. Yes, it's helpful to have someone walk you through your first syllabus, through your first exam that you design. It's helpful to get feedback. But honestly the most feedback I got was in the "shadow-teacher" experience as an MA student. I didn't really learn how to teach from my teachers as a grad student. Oh, sure, I attended some retreat things. Peter Elbow was at one of them. It was awesome, I guess. I suppose that at the end of the day I'd say the biggest problem with the way that graduate schools train English Literature PhDs to teach is that they don't train them to do the jobs that they will be hired to do. They train them to do the work that the PhD-granting institution needs them to do. That's not about training the next generation of professors - that's about training the current generation of exploited and contingent labor.

Professor as Scrapbooker

I hope I don't get a lot of readers who are excited for me to reveal an as yet hidden penchant for scrapbooking, because that's not what this post is about. This post is about the review process for professors on the tenure track. A review process, incidentally, that I knew little-to-nothing about prior to achieving tenure-track employment.

So, at my university, here's the deal. Every year, every single year, one must construct The Notebook. (At many places, one only needs to do this at the three-year point and then when one goes up for tenure. I'm not sure which is worse - or better, if we're being not quite so negative - as the version at my institution means I get constant feedback but the "third year review" version means that a lot less time is spent on scrapbooking activities.) The Notebook is due every year a few weeks into the fall semester. I think the theory is that this is beneficial because people can take time to work on it over the summer. The reality is that there is no good time to have this monstrosity come due, as it's a huge time-suck, and a real pain in the ass. Oh, and I should mention: this notebook is pretty much divorced from all other methods of reviewing faculty performance. Has nothing to do with "merit pay" raises, etc., and so I complete another document a few weeks into every spring semester that relates to all that stuff. And that document has slight but distinct differences from The Notebook, so you can't just copy and paste from one to the other.

So I've been trying to get to work on The Notebook early this year (instead of crapping it together in the week before it's due) because I really need to edit the thing a bit as well as to add some things and to re-organize some things. Partly I need to do all this because I've been crapping the thing together for three years. Partly I need to do all this because the tenure requirements at my university have just been "revised." Are they all that different from what they were before? Nah. And I'm not super-concerned about how these changes will affect me (though if I had been operating under the old system for years and was going up for tenure this fall I'd be pretty freaked out, as there's no grandfather clause or anything). But this is the thing about evaluation in this profession - it requires all of this rhetorical posturing and self-conscious self-presentation in order to justify your employment. And that is... well, tiring. And time-consuming. And a little bit sickening. And even though what is actually required in the notebook (self-evaluation statements, documentation that proves you're performing in the three areas - teaching, research, service - such as emails, paperwork, publications, student evaluations, blah blah blah) doesn't really change that much, the language and organization of that documentation is supposed to be slightly different. Or so it seems. And so I'm spending all this time changing the statements that go with each section and the opening letter that accompanies the whole thing and the ordering of shit to reflect the way that the administrative tides have been turning. And even though I'm not really doing my job any differently, I've got to present what I'm doing differently. And this is a pain. A colossal pain.

And then I wonder whether all of this time spent is really just time spent procrastinating. Does anybody really read this Notebook? Really? Are they really looking for this year's buzz words or do the buzz words really work some sort of subliminal mojo on those reviewing me? And does being selective and careful with what I choose to include help or hurt me, because at first everybody advised I should put in "everything." And did I mention that every fucking thing I include needs to be in a plastic fucking sleeve? And did I mention that I'm not sure if the binder I've got will hold all the things I've got, so I may need to special order a fucking binder because I'm not sure where in middle America to buy that big of a binder?

So yeah. That's what I've been spending last night and this afternoon doing today. At least I've been in air conditioning.

Secretarial Skills as Crucial to Professorial Success

Ok, so while I was in college/graduate school, I often fell back on the secretarial skills that my mom insisted were a good idea to have. (You know, along the lines of: whatever happens you'll always be able to get a job and make ends meet, even if you will be miserable.) I have worked as a receptionist. I have worked as a telephone operator (One of my favorite jobs, actually, being the operator in a huge office building. We were allowed to wear whatever we wanted and to do whatever we wanted as long as we answered the phones promptly when they rang and got the calls where they were supposed to go. This meant that during the summer I had that job I managed to do huge amounts of research about how to apply to graduate schools and that I read pretty much every novel by Margaret Drabble. Oh, and I had perfectly polished finger-nails. Yes, we polished our nails at work. Not a bad gig.) I worked for about nine months as a transcription typist. I've had temp gigs where the entire job was to file.

It strikes me, however, as I try to make sense of my office that these were not just "fall-back-just-in-case" skills. I'm still doing clerical work. After 10 years of higher education, after publications, after teaching, etc. I'm my own fucking secretary. I totally resent this.

2-Year Teaching Schedule - Woohoo!

I just got a note from the Scheduling Gods and I am SOOOOO excited about my teaching schedule for the next two years for my upper division courses.

1. I'm teaching a course in the area of my dissertation Fall 2006.
2. I'll be teaching a course that I just proposed and that just got passed as a general education course that counts for the diversity requirement that is about queer theory and literature. (Of course, I've not really designed the syllabus for this yet, so this will take a lot of work.)
3. I have been given the feminist theory course! That another of my colleagues has taught since I've been here! She had asked in passing if I'd be interested in teaching it, and I said sure, but I didn't realize she meant that it would really happen! I am so excited! Yay! Yay me! (Of course, this means designing a new course.)
4. Another course in postmodern and contemporary fiction.

Dr. Crazy thanks the Scheduling Gods for their consideration of her intellectual needs, and she is very excited to discuss how these courses develop on the blog in the coming months and years.

Edited to add:
A lot of people expressed surprise that we plan so far ahead in my department. I was going to explain all of this in comments, but then I thought that I didn't want to have that long of a comment and for this stuff to be buried in comments. So here's the deal with this 2-year schedule thing:

Part of the reason for this is because we're trying to make sure that the schedule is balanced in such a way that we don't have the problem of courses not making their enrollments. The idea is to have a plan that actually takes into account the courses that people want to teach and to try to make sure that they get to teach them.

But really, I think the point is that even though I've got a 4-4 load, I'm in a really humane department.

1. I teach the same writing courses every fall and spring, 2 sections of the same course, and I can pick and choose when I teach them. Thus, even though it is a chore for me to teach writing, it is made less painful because I'm accommodated by my department in these logistical ways. The same has tended to be true for my literature classes as well.

2. Every fall I teach the survey and every spring I teach intro to lit. I pretty much no longer have to do prep for these courses (unless I tweak or change them, as I do sometimes, but just on a day here or there), and this means that they're just totally a pleasure to teach. The only work really is in grading because I've got my schtick for the classroom down. I can't tell you how great that is, in part because it means that I can experiment in class a bit more and listen to the students more.

3. The upper-division courses are regarded by those who schedule as our reward for those other three "service" classes each semester and so every effort is made to make sure we get to teach them. And they really are a reward - I've never had to teach an upper division class that wasn't of my own invention and that wasn't directly related to my scholarly interests.

Finally, my class sizes are small (partly because the classrooms won't fit more people because they didn't plan for the school to have very many students, so if you're on a campus visit to a school like this, look for very small classrooms because it will mean that you will have a smaller # of students). Writing classes are now capped at 22. Generally I have between 25 and 30 in my service lit classes. And generally my upper division courses end up between 15 and 20. In other words, I teach fewer students than some of my friends working at liberal arts colleges (who also don't have TAs) and with only a 3-3 load.

If you're thinking about teaching at a regional comprehensive university, the gig I have is really a plum gig. Yes, it's still a 4-4 load. Yes, there are challenges to teaching the kind of students that this kind of university attracts. But really: it's not all that bad. And yes, I know what I will be teaching for the next two years. Oh, and I think part of the reason they make these sorts of plans is because they want to trap people here and because generally people never leave the department once hired, so it's not like making long-term plans is a waste of time/energy :)

Feminism in the Classroom: Why Feminism Isn't Just for Feminists

This post is in response to the following questions, which Derrick left in comments yesterday.

Derrick writes:

"I need to hear someone with skills articulate why "feminism isn't just for
feminists" in the world of education. At my school it is just dismissed.

We are undergoing our "self-study" for re-accreditation. I asked my
committee what part of that study examined diversity/equality issues. The
response? That would probably be the one which deals with fair hiring practices.

Obviously, my colleagues do not see this little community college as having
anything at stake in these discussions. We don't see ourselves as stakeholders
in gender/race discussions (let alone transformations).

I want to claim otherwise and when I read the third paragraph of your post
this was the bell it rung for me. You are writing about the impact of feminism
across the the curriculum (and beyond).

What would you say to me and my colleagues about our stake in this?"

Wow. Well, this is a lot to answer. I suppose the best that I can do is to tell you what I think, and then I'll leave the floor open for my fantastic readers to chime in with their thoughts on this, as I'm sure all of you will have something to say.

I guess the first thing that I'd say is that the reason that feminism isn't just for feminists, or shouldn't be, in the classroom is the same reason why the Holocaust isn't just for Jews or the Civil Rights movement isn't just for African-Americans or homophobia isn't just for gay people: because if as citizens we believe in equality and if we believe that all people should be treated in a fair and just way, that these issues aren't ones for special interest groups but rather that they are issues that have to do with the deeper values of our society as a whole. If we say, "oh, let the feminists teach feminism," or "let the lesbians teach queer theory," or whatever, then what we're doing is reinforcing the structures of inequality and the hierarchies in our culture that go against the "equality" we claim to value. Putting women or children or gay people, or Jews or Muslims or whoever in a ghetto of their own doesn't teach or increase diversity on a broader scale. I'm not saying that there isn't a place for special interest departments (like women's studies departments) or classes (like classes in Arabic literature), but if those are the only places in which these ideas and topics are explored, then those most likely to hear the message are those who need it the least. The student who needs feminism most is probably not the girl who will sign up for introduction to women's studies, you know?

But here's the problem. I think that because of the way that departments have developed at colleges and universities, it's not so easy as to say, "we all should teach about these things that are related to diverse groups and perspectives," and not only because of the curmudgeons who want to pass the buck to their colleagues in women's studies. Part of the problem is the way that as academics we like to take ownership over whatever our "thing" at the university is. For example, I've got a colleague who teaches [minority] literature. There had been a survey of this [minority] literature on the books for years and years, which was "my colleague's" course. We then hired another person who also wanted to teach the course, and my colleague's response was to split the survey into two halves, so that she could continue to be sure that she would teach it every semester, even though new colleague and she could have just traded off. Was there demand for this split by students? Not really. The point wasn't about bettering the diversity offerings for students; it was about marking intellectual territory. So before we chastise our colleagues who try to pass the buck about teaching about feminism or racism or whatever in their classes, I do think that it's important to see the ways in which they may have been discouraged from incorporating those things into their classes both by institutional structures as well as by those colleagues who "own" those topics.

So how to make one's colleagues see that they have a stake in race/gender discussions and/or transformations? Honestly, I do think that this begins from the ground up and not from the top down. I think it begins with one faculty member approaching some students who might be interested in forming some kind of a club, or it begins with one class developed by one faculty member and then those students going to the administration and asking for more classes like that class or for more of that material to be incorporated into other classes.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the way to make them see it is to look at the 4-year schools to which your students transfer, and to point out to them the diversity agenda of these universities, and to suggest that greater diversity at the community college would facilitate these students' success in their future endeavors.

I don't know. What do you all think?